The season is winding down on Florida grapefruit.
“The internal quality was good this season. Looking back on this season, it was a positive relative to our quality,” says Dan Richey of Riverfront Packing Company based in Vero Beach, FL.
He does note that the challenges were largely in lacking volume of grapefruit. “We’re only producing just short of 4 million boxes and in Florida’s peak, we were producing 60 million boxes,” he says, noting that reduction in the state’s volume is due to a variety of factors including Citrus Canker, hurricanes, urban encroachment due to massive population increase in Florida and, of course, citrus greening.
Of course, also challenging Florida growers were supply chain issues. “We export a lot of our grapefruit and trying to get our fruit into the export market was challenging. We would have had a better season if we didn’t have the logistics challenges in the supply chain,” Richey says.
Left: These higher density grapefruit plantings are 250 trees to the acre instead of standard 110 per acre; right: Protective covers over trees to prevent the insect from spreading greening disease.
Other producing regions
Along with Florida, while Texas is still producing some grapefruit, California coming into its season currently.
Meanwhile demand aligned with supply for Florida grapefruit. “Obviously with greening, when we go from 500-600 boxes/acres down to 200 boxes/acre, the only way we could survive is to increase our price,” Richey says. “We saw challenges in the international market with our pricing at the higher end. That said, Florida’s quality still demands a premium so we can overcome the price we have to get to stay in business.”
The limited supplies and increased cost inputs on shipping, materials, fertilizers and more meant pricing came out strong from the start. “Our FOB price that we bring back to the grower did not increase though. Inflationary components of the global market are hitting the grapefruit industry for sure,” says Richey.
Richey is hopeful about the future of the Florida grapefruit industry and says Florida is replanting.
Juice requirements and Mexican fruit
Also challenging this season was Mexican grapefruit and the USDA decision to drop the juice standard for imported fresh grapefruit. “We have minimum juice requirements as does Texas that we can’t ship fruit because we want to send consumers consistent quality fruit meeting certain requirements such as BRIX ratio and juice. So while we expected to see some increased demand due to Texas’s freeze, Mexico flooded our market with inferior product that wasn’t close to meeting our standards because of that agreement,” says Richey. “They really infiltrated the Texas supply channels and even some of our Florida channels. It was very detrimental to the grapefruit shippers in the U.S.”
However, looking ahead, Richey is hopeful about the future of the Florida grapefruit industry. “Florida is replanting. While we have our challenges, but supply is building slowly. We’re in the process of replanting 1,200 acres of grapefruit and others are doing the same,” he says. “The industry here is not going away.”
For more information:
Dan Richey
Riverfront Packing Company
Tel: +1 (772) 562-4124
[email protected]
www.scottcitrus.com